This diploma thesis deals with the economic and legal aspects of excise taxes in the EU. Excise taxes are among indirect taxes and can be divided into three basic groups: alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, and energy products and electricity. For individual commo-dities, EU Member States are harmonizing their legislation and minimum rates in order to prevent cross-border distortions of competition between EU countries. Part of the diploma thesis will be the analysis of the current situation in the field of excise taxes in the EU, the comparison of the individual commodities subject to these taxes.

The objective of the thesis is to investigate the development of excise taxes indicators in twenty-seven member states of the European Union (without Croatia due to the absence of data). The selected period for the analysis is the year 2004 - 2016. The main aim of the thesis is to define the groups of member states EU according to their importance and similarity with respect to the excise duties. With this aim is related the another important idea of the work. That is whether the indicators of excise duties are brought closer to the harmonization processes and if are the member states converging. The cluster analysis was used to achieve the main goal of the work. The data which is used in this analysis is obtained from Eurostat and European Commission databases. The results of cluster analyzes allow the member states to be divided into four of the most stable groups. The group of Nordic countries in Europe, group of border states, states of NMS-12 able to approach the EU-15 and other states of NMS-12. The cluster analyzes also shows that the original and new member states, that joined the EU in 2004 and later, are still different in the field of excise duties. Differences that exist despite the strict harmonization of individual tax systems, in particular the harmonization of excise rates, may be caused, in particular, to the historical roots of individual countries, but also by the economic and political situation.

This thesis deals with the consumption taxes changes in the Member States of EU in relation with the harmonization process. Its goal is to find out via chosen indicators, whether the influence of the harmonization processes in an area of value added taxes and excise duty, brings Member States of EU closer in an area of consumption taxation. As the main method of data processing is used the cluster analysis for which three indicators of tax burden are selected. Via analysis the cluster processes are used in selected years 2000 and 2017. All Member States are included with the exception of Croatia and that is because absence of the data. The data that are used in the cluster analysis are extracted from the Eurostat and from the database of European Commission. The states are divided according to the similarity of taxation into particular clusters. The results are presented in a form of graphical outputs the so called dendrograms. The conclusion is comparison of researched years according to the harmonization process. According to the cluster analysis results gained via selected consumption tax indicators, there is no converge occurring in 2000 to 2017 between original EU-15 states and the new Member States which have joined EU in 2004 or later.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal